Food Insecurity to Increase in Haiti and 21 Countries: FAO

On Monday, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) presented a report on the evolution of acute food insecurity until the end of 2023.

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In the "Hunger Hotspots" report, FAO and WFP call for urgent humanitarian action to save livelihoods and prevent starvation and death in 22 countries where acute hunger is at a high risk of worsening from June to November 2023.

"Afghanistan, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen remain at the highest alert level. Haiti, Burkina Faso, Mali and Sudan have been elevated to the highest concern levels; this is due to severe movement restrictions to people and goods in Burkina Faso, Haiti and Mali, and the recent outbreak of conflict in Sudan," the FAO-WFP report holds.

"The Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Pakistan and Syria are hotspots with very high concern," it added.

The FAO-WFP hotspots list also includes countries such as Myanmar, Lebanon, Malawi, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

All of these "hotspots" have high numbers of people facing critical acute food insecurity, along with worsening factors that are expected to further intensify life-threatening conditions in the coming months.

The situation in some countries could worsen markedly due to extreme weather events, such as heavy rains, tropical storms, cyclones, floods, and droughts. The risk of alteration in food availability increases due to the high probability of the arrival of El Niño by mid-2023.

"The expected shift in climate patterns will have significant implications for several hotspots, including below-average rains in the Dry Corridor of Central America, and raises the specter of consecutive extreme climatic events hitting areas of the Sahel and the Horn of Africa," the FAO-WFP report points out.